Two New Jersey men await sentencing in a federal courtroom in Scranton nearly a year after state police said they stopped them on Interstate 380 and found four kilograms of cocaine in their car.
Kelvin Vazquez-Pagan, 25, of Passaic, pleaded guilty last week before U.S. District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion to a charge of possession with intent to distribute cocaine, federal prosecutors said. The count carries a potential maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.
Another man in the car, Carlos Perez-Rivera, 37, of western New York, pleaded guilty to the same charge at the beginning of the month and awaits sentencing.
The state police pulled them over March 23 in a stop Vazquez-Pagan argued was “a drug investigation in search of a traffic violation.” In a motion to keep the evidence of drugs seized from the car out of court, he argued through his attorney the traffic stop was pretextual.
Mannion denied the motion.